The Sheldons

Estou de mudança, e sem tempo de escrever. Mas, como queremos manter o blog vivo e ativo, segue uma lista da Wired:

Fonte: Wired

Esta lista me agradou mais do que essa, provavelmente porque fiz mais “pontos” do que na outra…. Destaquei alguns que me foram particularmente nostálgicos…

Audio-Visual Entertainment

1. Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.
2. Super-8 movies and cine film of all kinds.
3. Playing music on an audio tape using a personal stereo. See what happens when you give a Walkman to today’s teenager.
4. The number of TV channels being a single digit. I remember it being a massive event when Britain got its fourth channel.
5. Standard-definition, CRT TVs filling up half your living room.
6. Rotary dial televisions with no remote control. You know, the ones where the kids were the remote control.
7. High-speed dubbing.
8. 8-track cartridges.
9. Vinyl records. Even today’s DJs are going laptop or CD.
10. Betamax tapes.
11. MiniDisc.
12. Laserdisc: the LP of DVD.
13. Scanning the radio dial and hearing static between stations. (Digital tuners + HD radio b0rk this concept.)
14. Shortwave radio.
15. 3-D movies meaning red-and-green glasses.
16. Watching TV when the networks say you should. Tivo and Sky+ are slowing killing this one.
17. That there was a time before ‘reality TV.’

Computers and Videogaming



18. Wires. OK, so they’re not gone yet, but it won’t be long
19. The scream of a modem connecting.
20. The buzz of a dot-matrix printer
21. 5- and 3-inch floppies, Zip Discs and countless other forms of data storage.
22. Using jumpers to set IRQs.
23. DOS.
24. Terminals accessing the mainframe.
25. Screens being just green (or orange) on black.
26. Tweaking the volume setting on your tape deck to get a computer game to load, and waiting ages for it to actually do it.
27. Daisy chaining your SCSI devices and making sure they’ve all got a different ID.
28. Counting in kilobytes.
29. Wondering if you can afford to buy a RAM upgrade.
30. Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time.
31. Turning a PlayStation on its end to try and get a game to load.
32. Joysticks.
33. Having to delete something to make room on your hard drive.
34. Booting your computer off of a floppy disk.
35. Recording a song in a studio.
36. Finding out information from an encyclopedia.
37. Using a road atlas to get from A to B.
38. Doing bank business only when the bank is open.
39. Shopping only during the day, Monday to Saturday.
40. Phone books and Yellow Pages.
41. Newspapers and magazines made from dead trees.
42. Actually being able to get a domain name consisting of real words.
43. Filling out an order form by hand, putting it in an envelope and posting it.
44. Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment.
45. Carrying on a correspondence with real letters, especially the handwritten kind.
46. Archie searches.
47. Gopher searches.
48. Concatenating and UUDecoding binaries from Usenet.
49. Privacy.
50. The fact that words generally don’t have num8er5 in them.
51. Correct spelling of phrases, rather than TLAs.
52. Waiting several minutes (or even hours!) to download something.
53. The time before botnets/security vulnerabilities due to always-on and always-connected PCs
54. The time before PC networks.
55. When Spam was just a meat product — or even a Monty Python sketch.
56. Typewriters.
57. Putting film in your camera: 35mm may have some life still, but what about APS or disk?
58. Sending that film away to be processed.
59. Having physical prints of photographs come back to you.
60. CB radios.
61. Getting lost. With GPS coming to more and more phones, your location is only a click away.
62. Rotary-dial telephones.
63. Answering machines.
64. Using a stick to point at information on a wallchart
65. Pay phones.
66. Phones with actual bells in them.
67. Fax machines.
68. Vacuum cleaners with bags in them.

Everything Else

69. Taking turns picking a radio station, or selecting a tape, for everyone to listen to during a long drive.
70. Remembering someone’s phone number.
71. Not knowing who was calling you on the phone.
72. Actually going down to a Blockbuster store to rent a movie.
73. Toys actually being suitable for the under-3s.
74. LEGO just being square blocks of various sizes, with the odd wheel, window or door.
75. Waiting for the television-network premiere to watch a movie after its run at the theater.
76. Relying on the 5-minute sport segment on the nightly news for baseball highlights.
77. Neat handwriting.
78. The days before the nanny state.
79. Starbuck being a man.
80. Han shoots first.
81. “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.” But they’ve already seen episode III, so it’s no big surprise.
82. Kentucky Fried Chicken, as opposed to KFC.
83. Trig tables and log tables.
84. “Don’t know what a slide rule is for …”
85. Finding books in a card catalog at the library.
86. Swimming pools with diving boards.
87. Hershey bars in silver wrappers.
88. Sliding the paper outer wrapper off a Kit-Kat, placing it on the palm of your hand and clapping to make it bang loudly. Then sliding your finger down the silver foil to break off the first finger
89. A Marathon bar (what a Snickers used to be called in Britain).
90. Having to manually unlock a car door.
91. Writing a check.
92. Looking out the window during a long drive.
93. Roller skates, as opposed to blades.
94. Cash.
95. Libraries as a place to get books rather than a place to use the internet.
96. Spending your entire allowance at the arcade in the mall.
97. Omni Magazine
98. A physical dictionary — either for spelling or definitions.
99. When a ‘geek’ and a ‘nerd’ were one and the same.

E vocês? O que acham que seus filhos não lembrarão?

O assunto de hoje, caros geeks, é EVE ONLINE (sim, assim em maiúsculas). É um MMORPG para o PC, antigo, já… Nunca joguei, e não conheço ninguém que tenha jogado.

Porque estou então escrevendo sobre o jogo, vocês me perguntam? Bom, li hoje um artigo na 1up sobre “confiança em videogames”. O artigo é curto, mas a premissa é interessante. Trata de como os jogos tratam da interação entre os jogadores, ou mesmo entre o jogador e os NPC (non playable characters), e como os laços de confiança sao criados/destruidos.

Cita inclusive um jogo que joguei: “John Carpenter´s The Thing”, em que os personagens que o jogador encontram podem ou não ter sido infectados pela “coisa”. Assim, você nunca sabe se o cara do seu lado vai lhe ajudar, ou tentar comer você (literalmente falando. espero). O jogo não é grandes coisa, mas tentou inovar.

Logicamente, a questão de confiança se torna muito mais prevalente em MMORPGs em que você interage com outros humanos, e que trabalham em conjunto atrás de um objetivo. Como manter uma confiança virtual em alguém que você não conhece na vida real? Num FPS qualquer, isso não é essencial, pois não se costuma permitir “player killing”, e quando isso ocorre, você morre, e logo volta. Mas, em alguns jogos, como WoW, isso envolve recursos do jogo, centenas de horas de jogo perdidas, itens raros….

Mas então, sempre achei interessante essa questão do Virtual x Real. Não estou afim de aprofundar o assunto, até porque poderia escrever 10 páginas e ninguém comenta mesmo, mas quis colocar pra vocês aqui duas situações ocorridas em EVE ONLINE, sobre as quais li anos atrás.

Pelo que pude entender, o jogo lhe permite adotar diferentes ocupações no espaço, comprar suas naves, fazer trocas, juntar seu dinheiro virtual (isk). O que é interessante é que há um real componente capitalista envolvido. Você pode criar corporações, realizar negócios, produzir bens, etc. E, como acontece em todos os MMOs, eventualmente isso entra no mundo real, e pessoas passam a vender itens virtuais (na verdade, suas horas de trabalho e investimento pessoal para conseguir os bens) por dinheiro real.

Na primeira situação, uma guilda de assassinos foi contratada para matar a CEO de uma das maiores corporações do jogo. Eles passaram um ano preparando o ataque, colocando seus membros em posições chave da companhia para, sincronizadamente, roubar todos seus bens, e matar a CEO.  O relato dessa estória está aqui. Infelizmente, não encontrei o relato em formato melhor do que o do link: são 4 imagens (scans das páginas da revista). Mas, dá pra ler, e a reportagem é curta (4 páginas) embora não explique exatamente como o ato foi feito, traz declarações de membros da guilda, uma listagem do prejuizo causado, e o dinheiro envolvido…

A segunda situacao é, para mim, mais interessante. Trata de um golpe financeiro aplicado por dois jogadores, conhecido como “The Great Scam”   Embora o prejuizo causado seja exponencialmente menor, o texto é muito legal porque foi escrito pelo próprio realizador do golpe. Assim, ele descreve, passo a passo, como ele foi feito. O cara escreve muito bem (tá em inglês, claro) e se torna uma leitura prazeirosa (pelo menos pra mim, geek). O texto tem 18 folhas, e pode ser baixado aqui. Sei que vocês reclamam que meus posts são longos, e essa leitura realmente é longa, mas gostei muito do texto. Como eu sei que vocês são preguicosos, e não vão nem clicar no link, coloco abaixo um pequeno trecho do texto:

This is a story of deception, intrigue, and doublecrossing. It is a story of liars, bandits, and greed. It is a story of the worst of the human condition, and how the motive for profit will drive a normally nice guy to the deepest depths of evil and betrayal.

This is the story of my life in Eve Online.

…

“We would like to remind the players of Eve Online that game masters are unable to assist players who have been involved in any sort of scam. We have taken measures to prevent scamming by making it easier for corporations to see exactly who has access to the shipyards and equipment pools, but it is up to the officers of the corporation themselves to ensure that they fully trust the individuals they recruit.”

I called Trazir again and told him about the things I had just read. We had a nice long talk, and our planning commenced.

The possibilities were tremendous. I could think of so many potential ways to make an unethical profit that it made my head hurt, and for once, I welcomed the pulsing pain. Horatio Alger’s spirit was alive that day, and I reveled in it. Since trading, our only source of income, was now so dangerous that it would be fruitless over a long term period of time, neither Trazir nor I had any moral qualms about screwing somebody else out of their money. After all, it was a dog eat dog universe, and the only ones who made it to the top were the ones who did so by any means possible.

Bom, acho que era isso. Tenho certeza que existem outras situações de golpes aplicados em jogos no mundo virtual, e apreciarei se as encaminharem pra mim. Esses do EVE ONLINE chamaram minha atenção por terem sido feitos dentro das “regras” do jogo, sem utilizar-se de nenhum outro artifício. Tanto que os próprios administradores do jogo se pronunciaram dizendo que não fariam nada a respeito.

É claro que, para os jornais, dá mais ibope escrever que “Hacker rouba milhares de dólares em jogo virtual”. Mas, nos casos em que citei o que houve foi uma atividade, realizada dentro das “regras” do jogo, em que bens virtuais foram surrupiados. Esses bens virtuais, que logicamente não deveriam ter valor, só são acessíveis através de muito trabalho e tempo. Então, de acordo com o velho Adam Smith, eles passam a ter valor financeiro. Assim, a manchete certa seria: “Jogador de EVE Online consegue x milhões de isk, que, se vendidos no mundo real, corresponderiam a…”  Mas, qual seria a graça, né?

Ainda assim, vários jogadores perderam coisas que lhe tomou meses de “trabalho”.  Lembra como você fica quando o Word trava, e você perde uma hora de texto que não salvou? (usem o autosave, crianças). Então, imagina como eles ficaram…

A questão do “crime” no mundo virtual é algo que me fascina, e adoro conversar a respeito. Mas vou parar, porque o post já está, de novo, longo.

No fim, a regra, tanto no mundo real como no virtual é de que: “se algo parece bom demais pra ser verdade, provavelmente o é.” Ou, melhor ainda, como se diz na minha terra: “camarão que dorme, a onda leva”.

Esta lista saiu na Wired. Achei interessante.. Acho que desses, faço em torno da metade. Não manjo tanto da parte de configuração de rede e programação. Mas, do 80 em diante, faço quase tudo, rs… E você(s), caro(s) leitor(es). Quantos fazem?

1. Properly secure a wireless router.
2. Crack the WEP key on a wireless router.
3. Leech Wifi from your neighbor.
4. Screw with Wifi leeches.
5. Setup and use a VPN.
6. Work from home or a coffee shop as effectively as you do at the office.
7. Wire your own home with Ethernet cable.
8. Turn a web camera into security camera.
9. Use your 3G phone as a Wi-Fi access point.
10. Understand what “There’s no Place Like 127.0.0.1″ means.
11. Identify key-loggers.
12. Properly connect a TV, Tivo, XBox, Wii, and Apple TV so they all work together with the one remote.
13. Program a universal remote.
14. Swap out the battery on your iPod/iPhone.
15. Benchmark Your Computer
16. Identify all computer components on sight.
17. Know which parts to order from NewEgg.com, and how to assemble them into a working PC.
18. Troubleshoot any computer/gadget problem, over the phone.
19. Use any piece of technology intuitively, without instruction or prior knowledge.
20. How to irrecoverably protect data.
21. Recover data from a dead hard drive.
22. Share a printer between a Mac and a PC on a network.
23. Install a Linux distribution. (Hint: Ubuntu 9.04 is easier than installing Windows)
24. Remove a virus from a computer.
25. Dual (or more) boot a computer.
26. Boot a computer off a thumb drive.
27. Boot a computer off a network drive.
28. Replace or repair a laptop keyboard.
29. Run more than two monitors on a single computer.
30. Successfully disassemble and reassemble a laptop.
31. Know at least 10 software easter eggs off the top of your head.
32. Bypass a computer password on all major operating systems
33. Carrying a computer cleaning arsenal on your USB drive.
34. Bypass content filters on public computers.
35. Protect your privacy when using a public computer.
36. Surf the web anonymously from home.
37. Buy a domain, configure bind, apache, MySQL, php, and WordPress without Googling a how-to.
38. Basic *nix command shell knowledge with the ability to edit and save a file with vi.
39. Create a web site using vi.
40. Transcode a DVD to play on a portable device.
41. Hide a File Behind a JPEG.
42. Share a single keyboard and mouse between multiple computers without a KVM switch.
43. Google obscure facts in under 3 searches. Bonus point if you can use I Feel Lucky.
44. Build amazing structures with LEGO and invent a compelling back story for the creation.
45. Understand that it is LEGO, not Lego, Legos, or Lego’s.
46. Build a two story house out of LEGO, in monochrome, with a balcony.
47. Construct a costume for you or your kid out of scraps, duct tape, paper mâché, and imagination.
48. Be able to pick a lock.
49. Determine the combination of a Master combination padlock in under 10 minutes.
50. Assemble IKEA furniture without looking at the instructions. Bonus point if you don’t have to backtrack.
51. Use a digital SLR in full manual mode.
52. Do cool things to Altoids tins.
53. Be able to construct paper craft versions of space ships.
54. Origami! Bonus point for duct tape origami. (Ductigami)
55. Fix anything with duct tape, chewing gum and wire.
56. Knowing how to avoid being eaten by a grue.
57. Know what a grue is.
58. Understand wherre XYZZY came from, and have used it.
59. Play any SNES game on your computer through an emulator.
60. Burn the rope.
61. Know the Konami code, and where to use it.
62. Whistle, hum, or play on an iPhone, the Cantina song.
63. Learning to play the theme songs to the kids favorite TV shows.
64. Solve a Rubik’s Cube.
65. Calculate THAC0.
66. Know the difference between skills and traits.
67. Explain special relativity in terms an eight-year-old can grasp.
68. Recite pi to 10 places or more.
69. Be able to calculate tip and split the check, all in your head.
70. Explain that the colours in a rainbow are roygbiv.
71. Understand the electromagnetic spectrum – xray, uv, visible, infrared, microwave, radio.
72. Know the difference between radiation and radioactive contamination.
73. Understand basic electronics components like resistors, capacitors, inductors and transistors.
74. Solder a circuit while bottle feeding an infant. (lead free solder please.)
75. The meaning of technical acronyms.
76. The coffee dash, blindfolded (or blurry eyed). Coffee <brew> [cream] [sugar]. In under a minute.
77. Build a fighting robot.
78. Program a fighting robot.
79. Build a failsafe into a fighting robot so it doesn’t kill you.
80. Be able to trace the Fellowship’s journey on a map of Middle Earth.
81. Know all the names of the Dwarves in The Hobbit.
82. Understand the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel.
83. Know where your towel is and why it is important.
84. Knowing the answer to life, the universe and everything.
85. Re-enact the parrot sketch.
86. Know the words to The Lumberjack Song.
87. Reciting key scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
88. Be able to recite at least one Geek Movie word for word.
89. Know what the 8th Chevron does on a Stargate and how much power is required to get a lock.
90. Be able to explain why it’s important that Han shot first.
91. Know why it is just wrong for Luke and Leia to kiss.
92. Stop talking Star Wars long enough to get laid.
93. The ability to name actors, characters and plotlines from the majority of sci-fi movies produced since 1968.
94. Cite Mythbusters when debunking a myth or urban legend.
95. Sleep with a Cricket bat next to your bed.
96. Have a documented plan on what to do during a zombie or robot uprising.
97. Identify evil alternate universe versions of friends, family, co-workers or self.
98. Be able to convince TSA that the electronic parts you are carrying are really not a threat to passengers.
99. Talk about things that aren’t tech related.
100. Get something on the front page of Digg.

Webcomic sobre eventuais features do Project Natal, da M$